Super Bowl power outage traced back to faulty device

Despite some speculation that Beyonce‘s halftime show might have blown out the power at the Superdome last Sunday, the stadium’s power company said Friday that a device meant to protect the power supply to the arena had failed during the Super Bowl.

Officials from Entergy New Orleans, the company that installed the device (called a relay), said it was put in to protect the Superdome from a cable failure between the company’s incoming power line and the lines that run into the stadium.

The faulty device, which performed without incident during other events at the Superdome, has been removed, according to the officials. Replacement equipment will be installed.

The failure of the relay cut out the lights in about half of the Superdome for 34 minutes during the Super Bowl on Sunday, and the power company spent this week trying to find the root of the problem.